The Rare Art Traditions

A cultural and social history of art collecting, art history, and the art market

In The Rare Art Traditions, Joseph Alsop offers a wide-ranging cultural and social history of art collecting, art history, and the art market. He argues that art collecting is the basic element in a remarkably complex and historically rare behavioral system, which includes the historical study of art, the market for buying and selling art, museums, forgery, and the astonishing prices commanded by some works of art. The Rare Art Traditions tells the story of three important traditions of art collecting: the classical tradition that began in Greece, the Chinese tradition, and the Western tradition. The result is a major original contribution to art history.

“Art historians have produced a rich literature on the history of art patronage and art collecting through the ages, but what we know about the art market and the history of art dealing is woefully inadequate. . . . It has remained for a private scholar who is not an art historian by training, Mr. Joseph Alsop, to accomplish what we should have done long ago.”—H. W. Janson, author of History of Art